Treacherous Waters - Chapter 24
Chapter 24 <combined>
Death had come for the starship
Intrepid.
On the forward view screen, Shantok watched the Velk battlecruiser bolt forward. In less than 50 seconds the ship around her would be pulverized, its occupants spread into irradiated vapor.
Faced with this absolute, part of her felt regret at not being able to see the mission through-----to in some small way, honor her mentor Captain Zorek. She attributed this uncustomary feeling to her Betazoid side, a place where unwanted emotion resided. Fortunately, the distraction was compartmentalized within an area of her mind where it couldn’t impair her judgment.
It took precisely two seconds for her to review all of the standard options. The emergency shields wouldn’t be enough to stave off the collision and impulse power was down. Phasers wouldn’t defeat the approaching craft and it was outside torpedo acquisition. Tractor beam was offline. Added to this misfortune was the knowledge that the crew had insufficient time to escape.
In the next two seconds, her mind reviewed options outside the parameters of normal protocol and starship operation-----what humans might call “thinking outside the boundaries.” She sought one of those ingenious solutions that Captain Aubrey was known for.
But inspiration failed her.
She then moved her thinking beyond the borders of the mere unconventional and into the lair of the incongruous and unethical.
It was in this murky realm that a glimmer of hope emerged.
Even if her idea were successful, the odds in favor were dismally small. Worse, it would violate everything she believed in, everything she valued about herself. Physically she might continue, but her identity would be lost-----perhaps for the remainder of her days.
To say nothing of the inherent risk to the crew.
It took but a second more to weigh that potential risk and her personal sacrifice against the five hundred souls on board and arrive at a decision.
***
Victory is life.
The problem was it didn’t feel like a victory to the Jem’Hadar who commanded the Velk warship.
First, they were ordered to attack
Intrepid at the Bog outpost as a display of force-----all to make Sharm’s rescue look authentic. What was to be a mild skirmish had become a full-blown conflict, one they had lost due to Jason Aubrey’s cowardly trick.
Then, a frantic call from the operative aboard
Intrepid. The idiot changeling managed to get himself captured. “Rescue me!” He had cried.
The Jem’Hadar “First” was fed up. He had already decided some time ago the changeling was expendable. He certainly had no intention of attempting a rescue of the foolish shape-shifter. But destroying the changeling worked even better. After all, in the hands of the enemy he was now a liability.
His plan was a simple one, but provided an elegant solution in removing a growing handicap.
The First would use his ship as a tactical weapon to strike Gibraltar. He and his men would jettison before impact, using their personal cloaks to evade detection. One of the Velk ships would pick them up discreetly soon after. The loss of his ship would be a temporary set back, but well worth the sacrifice.
He was confident that Jivin Sharm could be threatened or bribed into assuming power as they had originally planned. This time however, it would be the First and his squad who would pull the strings.
But Aubrey had appeared again, hounding them, attacking with a ruthlessness that had surprised even the Jem’Hadar. It was the type of bloodthirsty zeal he might have expected from a Klingon, not a human Starfleet captain.
Again, defeat.
And now with capture a certainty, he decided upon a noble end-----a sacrifice he wouldn’t have made for the wayward changeling, but one worth making to strike down a worthy opponent. In this final act he would steal back his dignity.
His only regret would be not surviving to gloat over-----
Abruptly, all conscious thought ceased. The First began to howl like a maimed animal.
He didn’t know why, or how, or from where this assault came. He only knew that he was suddenly in a state of absolute torment. Vermin seemed to be scratching at the inside of his skull. He was being burned alive. He was being gutted, dismembered and skinned.
Then the psychological torture began. Every disgrace and failure that a soldier could imagine was his to experience. He lived a dozen torturous lifetimes in the span of a single heartbeat.
His mental suffering was unspeakable. It merged with the physical pain he was registering, yet somehow he managed to feel everything separate and equally.
Even for a Jem’Hadar there reaches a point where their nervous system shuts down from over stimulus and shock. And yet, incredibly, that didn’t happen. Somehow, his demonic assailant had utter control over his mind and body-----and it was denying him the release of madness or death. His anguish would be everlasting.
Through this grisly horror there was a tiny window of blissful relief-----and a thought sneaked in from outside, a powerful compulsion:
TURN
The agony increased. His insides were filled with carnivorous worms that were devouring him from within.
He pleaded for it to end.
His tormenter was unmoved. It continued to crawl through his mind and body, slashing both aspects of him with sadistic precision.
He knew only one thought: that he would do absolutely anything to make it stop.
Anything.
TURN
He couldn’t know that his subordinates were living through the same hell that he was.
“Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn,” his Second gibbered as he slapped hysterically at the helm controls, drool spilling from his mouth.
But the First didn’t see it-----because by that time, he had gouged out his own eyes.
***
Ensign Gabriel Sorna threw her head back and unleashed a ghastly scream of terror. She thrashed in her chair as though responding to raw electrical current. Her hands began snatching at her head, ripping out fistfuls of dark hair. “Turn!” She wailed. “Turn! Turn! Turn! Turn, turn, turn, turn, turnturnturn-----“
All bodies on the bridge were now jerking spasmodically as crewman writhed in their seats or on the deck. Some were laughing in uncontrolled gales of hysteria. Others wept and cursed, as though immersed in the darkest pit of Hades.
Even Captain Aubrey’s unconscious mind was not immune. His brain was suddenly jump-started and began firing chaotic signals to his body. He began to convulse violently-----all the while his hands hung before him, clutching at a phantom control panel as though he were a drunken marionette. “Turn,” He murmured from the shallows of semi-consciousness. “Turn.”
The bridge officers were now producing sounds that would not have been out of place in the worst dungeons of history.
Vacant chairs began to spin wildly as though occupied by poltergeists. Turbolift doors snapped open and closed with the speed of an old-fashioned trip-hammer.
Shantok was a rigid monument in the center of the room. Her elegant hands were curled into claws and pressed against her temples. Her eyes were rolled back into her head, revealing a stark whiteness. Silently, she mouthed a single word over and over.
***
The Velk warship banked away at literally the last possible moment. Its hull scraped
Intrepid’s starboard saucer as it bounced off into space. A small cloud of fragments expanded from the point of impact.
As luck would have it, the Velk’s new trajectory put it on a direct course for the approaching
Gibraltar.
*****
USS Gibraltar
Gibraltar bore down on the attacking Velk warship, but was clearly too late to stop its inevitable collision with
Intrepid. After the shock of the destruction of Captain Zorek's task force, Sandhurst steeled himself for the death of yet another Starfleet vessel that he was unable to save.
Incredibly, at the last moment, the enormous battle wagon executed a hard turn and veered away from
Intrepid. The hulls of the two vessels had barely touched. The craft now raced towards
Gibraltar, the weapon-studded bow of the battleship loomed large on the main viewer.
Sandhurst watched this development for a long moment before he remarked dryly, "Well, that'd be them coming right for us then."
"So it would seem," Lar'ragos affirmed quietly from behind him.
"Bound to happen, really," Shanthi offered. "This is us, after all."
Sandhurst sat forward in the command chair and rested his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath and disgorged a litany of commands, "All available shield power to forward and starboard grids. Helm, swing us to port, I want a pass down their starboard side. Tactical, phasers only, we're too close to
Intrepid to be setting off quantums with their shields fluctuating. Target weapons and propulsion systems."
Various crew affirmed and executed their orders.
*****
Ashok kept a close watch on the shield generator readouts. He'd managed to rig the shield grid ever so delicately to provide full coverage to all quarters, but the system was now even more susceptible to overload than usual. He hoped that the captain would steer the ship clear of weapons fire or other dangers, but Ashok knew from experience that his fervent wishes were made in vain.
He caught sudden movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Engineer's Mate S'Var practically sprinting across the floor of engineering to the systems override panel. The Vulcan grabbed hold of Ensign Lascomb who manned that station and flung her nearly the whole length of the compartment.
"Turn!" S'Var bellowed in an unnervingly un-Vulcan like manner. "Turn-turn-turn-turn-turn!" Her hands flew across the interface as she slaved main helm control to her panel.
*****
"I've lost helm control!" the petty officer at the flight control station blurted suddenly.
Pell jumped up from her station and raced to the helm console. She initiated her command override code to no effect. The console continued to buzz ineffectually as it refused to accept any inputs. She glanced over her shoulder at Sandhurst, "Flight control has been diverted to main engineering, sir!"
Sandhurst slapped at his compin, "Lt. Ashok, what the hell is going on down there?"
*****
Ashok was not sure of S'Var's intentions, but he was taking no chances. He raced across to where S'Var stood and boxed the Vulcan's hypersensitive ears with his enormous hands.
She screamed and toppled over, her hands clutched to the sides of her head. Ashok raised a foot and brought it down with just enough force to pin the Vulcan woman's head to the floor. He typed a flurry of commands into the panel and released control of helm functions back to the bridge.
"Ashok to Captain Sandhurst, helm restored!"
***
USS Intrepid
“Warning: anti-matter containment failure: warp core breach in one minute, twenty-one seconds.”
“All right, I get it. Shut up already!” Juneau hissed at the computer. She had made progress. She had been able to reconfigure the board for universal function. She had entered the temporary command code that was issued to her upon arriving on the
Intrepid-----and it had been accepted. She had even made it as far as completing the first two steps in shutting down the warp core.
Now an unexpected obstacle hindered her: she didn’t know where the articulation cut off routine was located on her panel. She knew she had access to it, she just wasn’t recognizing it.
So close. So damn close.
She barely contained the compulsion to hammer the panel with her fist. Why the hell wasn’t her board in the standard configuration?
There was a grinding bang that made the deck jolt beneath her. She grabbed the access ladder beside her to keep from losing her footing. Something had just hit the ship again, but the impact was lighter this time. It seemed to come from far above her.
“Warning: anti-matter containment failure: warp core breach in fifty-nine seconds.” The computer updated her thoughtfully.
She returned her eyes to the conundrum before her, trying desperately to calm her escalating sense of hopelessness and approaching panic.
Had she been any normal engineering officer of this ship, she could have just jettisoned the damn core and be done with it. But her command code didn’t allow it. And the fact that no one on the bridge had taken action meant no one was going to. Not in time.
Frantic thoughts came. She hit her combadge. “Juneau to
Gibraltar.” She nearly yelled. But her badge was dead from the energy discharges created by the battle. It had been a distant hope anyway.
But what she wouldn’t give right now to hear Ashok’s voice.
“Warning: anti-matter containment failure: warp core breach in thirty-seven seconds.”
She never would decide what made her see the answer. But see it she did. She suddenly understood why her board wasn’t standard-----why it was hard to read and yet seemed familiar.
It was Cal Benjamin she was looking at. She saw his hand in the board’s layout-----the way it was organized. She remembered from days past how he configured networks and functionality, tailoring operations to what he smugly decided was best.
She remembered.
And her hands guided her through the sequence that she needed.
“Core shut down has commenced.” The computer rewarded after anxious seconds went by.
“Warp core breach averted.”
At first Juneau didn’t believe it. It was just too good to be true. She had just stood seconds from oblivion and now…she was relatively safe. She had actually been ready this time, ready for the end.
Was there disappointment in there somewhere?
My God, was some part of me looking forward to it this time? She wondered.
She had no answer to that. Olivia Juneau leaned over and put both hands on the console, waiting for her body to stop shaking.
***
